By contrast, ED commits to a definite ontology — if we are talking particles, then the positions of those particles are real; if we are talking fields, then the values of the fields are real! In the language of Kochen and Specker [1]}: in ED we commit to a set of (abelian) non-contextual variables, similar to those appearing in the Bohmian approach [2]}[3]}[4]}. In fact, at first glance there seems to be a significant amount of formal overlap between ED and the de Broglie-Bohm theory.It is, of course, quite characteristic of many reconstructions that they converge upon a particular formulation of standard quantum theory — whether it be Hilbert spaces, Feynman path integrals, etc. Depending on the design of your reconstruction, one or another formulation may be more natural to obtain. But it is important to stress that they are quite different. For instance, we do not subscribe to the belief, as the Bohmians do, that \(\Psi \)  has ontic status. The state \(\Psi \)  is epistemic. Moreover, the Bohmian approach is completely deterministic at the microscopic level: the particles, fields, etc., follow smooth trajectories. ED, on the other hand, is completely indeterministic from the outset: our goal is only to infer this underlying behavior on the basis of some limited information. (It may even be, in fact, that ED contains the formalism of the Bohmian theory as a special case! See e.g., [5]}.)
